Feds charge woman who hurled shoe at Hillary Clinton

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ducks after a woman threw an object toward her while she was delivering remarks at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries conference on April 10, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada.(AFP Photo / Isaac Brekken) / AFP

The woman who threw a shoe at former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a speech in Las Vegas last Thursday is now facing federal charges. Clinton dodged the object and an usher escorted the woman, Alison Michelle Ernst, from the audience.

Clinton had only been on stage at the Institute of Scrap
Recycling Industries convention at Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino
for moments when the object flew toward her from the crowd.
Clinton, also a former New York state senator and first lady,
stepped out of its path and joked, “My goodness, I didn't
know that solid waste management was so controversial,” the
Associated Press reported. “Good thing she didn’t play
softball like I did!”

Ernst pulled the shoe – a black-and-orange Puma cleat – from her
purse and hurled it at Clinton from about 60 feet away, witnesses
told AP. The shoe was later recovered from the stage. The Secret
Service complaint says Ernst also threw papers towards Clinton.

Mark Carpenter, a spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling
Industries, told CBS News that Ernst did not have convention
credentials and, as such, should not have been in the ballroom.
Secret Service Agent Edward Autelli wrote in the federal
complaint that Ernst “somehow got past” the people checking
tickets at Mandalay Bay.

Carpenter told CNN that Ernst "must have slipped under the
rope at the last second." He added, "I saw papers fly
when the protester stood up. I saw papers flying in the
air." According to CBS News, one of the papers appeared to
be a copy of a Department of Defense document from 1967 about an
operation in Bolivia.

On Sunday, federal authorities lodged two criminal charges
against Ernst: trespassing and violence against a person in a
restricted building.

Ernst was booked by Las Vegas police on Friday on a misdemeanor
disorderly conduct charge. She was later released. At the time of
her arrest, “Ernst appeared to be in an agitated state but
aware of what she had just done,” the police report said.
Ernst acknowledged throwing a shoe but didn't explain her actions
to reporters as she was taken into custody by the Secret Service,
AP reported.

District Attorney Steve Wolfson said he will likely drop the
local charge now that Ernst is facing federal charges, according
to the Review-Journal. Ernst could face up to a year in prison
for each federal charge, according to the Journal News. She could
have received up to six months for the disorderly conduct
misdemeanor.

Talking heads from the conservative right believe that Ernst was
a Clinton plant designed to make her seem more presidential,
recalling the 2008 incident in which a Muslim journalist threw
two shoes at then-President George W. Bush.

According to a post on Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg’s
blog, “There is a political axiom, I believe first posed by
Euclid or Archimedes, that when Hillary does something, or when
something happens to her, she has carefully calculated it
beforehand.”

The post’s author, Arthur Louis, goes on to say, “Remembering
the Bush incident, she may have calculated that this would make
her seem presidential. This would explain why Ms. Ernst was not
pounded to a pulp by Hillary’s bodyguards, and why she seems on
the verge of getting off scot free. Don’t be too surprised, the
next time you visit Phoenix, if you see her sitting at a table in
a downtown Hillary for President store front, stuffing and
sealing envelopes.”

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh also waded into the
controversy, despite admitting not having seen footage of the
incident. “Maybe it’s because, in my subconscious, I think it
was staged, or set up, or whatever,” he said on his radio
show on Monday. “I don’t know why anybody would be throwing a
shoe at Hillary unless – maybe it’s an attempt to make the
Benghazi people look like nuts and lunatics and wackos.”

Clinton has Secret Service protection because former presidents
and their spouses are covered for their lifetimes, said Brian
Spellacy, head of the US Secret Service office in Las Vegas.

Clinton said in a speech in San Francisco last Tuesday that she
is seriously considering a presidential bid, CBS News reported.
She is currently touring the country and delivering a series of
speeches while working on a book about her time in the State
Department during the first four years of the Obama
administration. She appeared at the Las Vegas conference
alongside Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.